REH
Bookshelf - P
compiled
by Rusty Burke
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Papini,
Giovanni | Parker,
James W. | Parrish,
Randall | Parrott,
Thomas Marc | Peake,
Harold | Pendexter,
Hugh | Perry,
Tyline | Petaja,
Emil | Petrie,
Sir W.M. Flinders | Petronius,
Gaius | Pierrot | Pindar
| Pinero,
Sir Arthur Wing | Plato
| Plutarch
| Poe,
Edgar Allan | Poetry
(general) | The
Police Gazette | Powell,
John Wesley | Preece,
Lenore | Price,
Edgar Hoffmann
(1881-1956)
New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1923.
30606; PQ4; GL; TDB.
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with an impartial
geographical description of ... Texas: written by himself.
To which is appended a Narrative of the capture and
subsequent sufferings of Mrs. Rachel Plummer during a captivity of
twenty-one months among the Comanche Indians: with a sketch of
their manners, customs, laws, &c. &: with a short
description of the country over which she traveled whilst with the
Indians. [Publication data unknown: ca. 1844; Mrs. Plummer's
narrative first published 1839].
Reprinted as The Rachel Plummer Narrative: A
stirring narrative of adventure, hardship and privation in the
early days of Texas, depicting struggles with the Indians and
other adventures ... [n.p. (Palestine, Texas): Rachel Lofton,
Susie Hendrix and Jane Kennedy (descendants of James W. Parker),
1926]
REH
to H.P. Lovecraft, ca. 31 May 1935: "I find the smug and
self-righteous attitude of the [Woonsocket] 'Patriot's' gentlemen
[who had written, of Santa Ana: "How can we style him a
tyrant, who opposed the efforts of rebels and used them with
deserved severity!"] in striking contrast to men like James
W. Parker, who lived in that period.
It was less than a month after San Jacinto that James W.
Parker wrote his red chapter into Texas history.... It is of Jim
Parker I would speak, and I can not tell his story better than in
his own words.... Let James W. Parker tell his own story."
Howard then quotes several paragraphs relating the escape
from Fort Parker and the arduous trek to Fort Houston, an account
given in The Rachel Plummer Narrative on pages 8-10.
His quotations do not match exactly with the narrative
included in this book: perhaps he had to hand another, slightly
rewritten version of Parker's narrative.
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(1858-1923)
Chicago:
A.C. McClurg, 1906. 30756;
PQ4; GL; TDB.
[Western novel,
with a strikingly Howardian hero.]
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(1866-1960)
and Augustus White Long
Edited for
Use in Schools. Boston:
Ginn & Co., 1902. 30735;
PQ2 (author as "Darratt and Long," title as
"English Poems"); GL (title same as PQ2, listed under
heading "Data on the following is incomplete and/or
questionable"); TDB.
[The version of the ballad, "The Battle of Otterbourne,"
which Howard used for chapter headings in "Lord of
Samarcand," appears to be the one in this book.]
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(1867-1946)
London: Benn Brothers, 1922.
REH to Harold Preece, 24 November 1930 [SL 1 #48]:
"Nor have I read The Bronze Age and the Celtic World though
the title interests me highly and I intend to read it as soon as I
can obtain it."
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(1875-1940)
Adventure, July 15, August 1, 1931.
REH to H.P. Lovecraft , ca. 10 August 1931: "By
the way, while you were in Florida, did you hear anything of 'the
Old People'? According to Hugh Pendexter, old chronicles of the country
speak of ruins of roadways, fortresses and buildings, supposed to
have been erected by some pre-Indian race.
In his serial recently appearing in 'Adventure' -- the
first installment of which appeared in the same issue as 'The
Black Beast' [by Henry S. Whitehead] -- 'Devil's Brew' he strikes
some really convincing notes of lurking horror and sinister
speculation with his mysterious sunken city, brooding beneath the
sullen waters of a swamp-land lake, with its serpent-guardians and
cryptic golden, headless and winged images, hinting uncanny origin
and meaning. If you
haven't seen this tale, I'd be mighty glad to lend you the
magazines containing it."
REH to H.P. Lovecraft, ca. 4 October 1931: "I'm
sending you the issues of Adventure containing Pendexter's yarn.
No hurry about returning them."
REH to H.P. Lovecraft, ca. December 1931: "Glad
you liked the Pendexter story.
When I was reading it, I had an idea that he'd reveal the
haunting horror to be a reptile of some sort, and wished that you
were writing it, for I knew you'd make the climax fit the
atmosphere in a much more shuddersome and imaginative
fashion."
Adventure, 30 November 1921 - 10 January 1922 (5
parts).
[See Appendix
Two]
Adventure, 20 April - 20 May 1922 (4 parts).
[See Appendix
Two]
Adventure, 1 May - 15 June 1921 (4 parts).
[See Appendix
Two]
Adventure, 10 June - 20 July 1922.
[See Appendix
Two]
Adventure, 10 February - 10 March 1922 (4 parts).
[See Appendix
Two]
Adventure, 30 October 1921.
[See Appendix
Two]
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(1897-
)
[Tevis Clyde Smith to REH, ca. March 1931: "I
also noticed that Tyline Perry had a book length detective in this
number of Excitement. I
do not know her personally, though she is a former Brownwood girl
who has had one novel published, and has another one due off the
press shortly. I
understand that she has sold about ninety short stories in the
last three or four years, too."]
REH to Tevis Clyde Smith, ca. March 1931: "As
for Tyline Perry, I've never read anything by her, but I guess
she's hot on the heels of Vina Delmar -- not in style, for I know
naught of her line, but in fame, fortune and fertility."
[Perry has only two novels listed in the National Union Catalog: The
Owner Lies Dead (New York: Covici-Friede, 1930) and The
Never Summer Mystery (New York: A.H. King, 1932).]
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(1915-
)
REH to Emil Petaja, 23 July 1935: "I'll be
looking forward to reading your short story: 'Antique', and hope
to see your work soon in Weird Tales."
One Who Walked Alone, p. 129, quotes a letter
from REH: "So here are the poems I promised to copy for you
several months ago -- Petaja's sonnet, and my own junk."
Petaja's sonnet is given the title "Echo From the Ebon
Isles," and is a variant of his "The Warrior" (see below). Howard wrote
to Petaja, 14 December 1934, thanking him for the sonnet; but the
account in One Who Walked Alone suggests that this letter
from REH is received shortly before Christmas, 1934, and states,
"He showed me the sonnet a couple of months ago."
REH to Emil Petaja, 14 December 1934: "Thank
you very much for the splendid sonnet.
I feel deeply honored that a poem of such fine merit should
be dedicated to me. You
seem to grasp the motif of my stories, the compelling idea-force
behind them which is the only excuse for their creation, more
completely than any one I have yet encountered.
This fine sonnet reveals your understanding of the
abstractions I have tried to embody in these tales."
[sic].
Marvel Tales, Summer 1935.
REH to Emil Petaja, 23 July 1935: "I read your
recent poem: 'Witch's Bercuese' in the recent Marvel Tales and
liked it very much; the rhythm is smooth and musical and the
somber motif is fascinating."
REH to Emil Petaja, 6 September 1935: "Yes, I
did like 'Witch's Berceuse' very much, and hope to see more of
your poetry soon. I'll
be looking forward to those poems and short stories due to appear
in Marvel Tales, and see no reason why you shouldn't be able to
market some of your work to Weird Tales.
Many poems have appeared in that magazine which were
inferior to your 'Witch's Berceuse."
[Monthly Terrors shows "Bercuese" in the
index for the Summer 1935 issue.
It also shows that as the last issue of the magazine.]
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(1853-1942)
"Children of the Night": "And
Flinders Petrie has shown that the Lombards changed from
a long-headed to a round-headed race in a few
centuries."
In
Petrie's Migrations (The Huxley Lecture for 1906) (London:
Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, n.d.
[1906]; reprinted from the Journal of the Anthropological
Institute, Vol. XXXVI), p. 30, he wrote: "Now let us
remember that these Lombards had left Scandinavia, which has the
longest-headed population of Europe, and yet at present the
Lombards have almost the broadest heads in Europe.... To my own
sense of history it seems certain that twelve hundred years have
sufficed to change entirely the cephalic index of a people so as
to accord with their environment."
See also "The Book of History."
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( -66)
n.p.: Privately printed, 1928. Translation attributed to
Oscar Wilde.
Howard gave an
unnumbered copy (from an edition of 1200) of this book to Tevis
Clyde Smith, inscribed: "'Apeneck Sweeney spreads his knees /
Letting his hands hang down to laugh. / The zebra stripes along
his jaw / swell to macculate giraffe.' / Yet in spite of this here
between / these covers is proof that the world / was once even
more mad than it is / now. / Bob"
[“Apeneck Sweeney...macculate giraffe” is a quotation from
T.S. Eliot,
“Sweeney Among the Nightingales,” q.v.]
REH to Tevis Clyde Smith, ca. March 1930 [SL 1 #32]:
"Glad you like The Satyricon.
Petronious was an utter wretch but he wasn't a hypocrite,
anyway. I believe it
is said that he was not a native Roman, but a Romanized Gaul.
Well, if he was, he was so completely Romanized that all
the Gaul had faded out of him."
REH to The Eyrie, March 1932: "[Clark Ashton]
Smith's sweep of imagination and fantasy is enthralling, but what
captivates me most is the subtle, satiric humour that threads its
delicate way through so much of his work—a sly humour that
equals the more subtle touches of Rabelais and Petronius."
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"The
Poets": "Why, Pierrot might have been a musty sage,
| Francois Villon a stoled and sour priest."
Originally a stock character in Italian drama and
pantomime, a clown lover. "From
the simple figure of the early pantomime, poets and artists have
gradually evolved another, more romantic Pierrot, an artist-lover
of soaring imagination who grimly hides his real passions behind a
comic mask." -- The Reader's Encyclopedia
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(522/518-432/438 B.C.)
REH to H.P. Lovecraft, ca. 13 July 1932: "Once
I tried to write polished verse and prose with the classic touch,
and my efforts were merely ridiculous, like Falstaff trying to don
the mantle of Pindar."
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(1855-1934)
REH to H.P. Lovecraft, ca. September 1933: "I
quite agree with your estimate of the average newspaper, and do
not differ radically with your opinion of radio programs.
And yet it would be erroneous to say that all radio
programs are entirely without cultural value... I have heard,
among other things, such plays as,... 'The Iron Master'... Of
course I had rather see these things on the stage, but as my
chances of doing that are so slim they are practically
non-existant, I was grateful for the opportunity of hearing them
over the air.
(1898).
REH to H.P. Lovecraft, ca. September 1933: "I
quite agree with your estimate of the average newspaper, and do
not differ radically with your opinion of radio programs.
And yet it would be erroneous to say that all radio
programs are entirely without cultural value... I have heard,
among other things, such plays as... 'Trelawny of the Wells'...
Of course I had rather see these things on the stage, but
as my chances of doing that are so slim they are practically
non-existant, I was grateful for the opportunity of hearing them
over the air."
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(ca. 427-348
B.C.)
REH to Tevis Clyde Smith, ca. 20 February 1928 [SL 1
#10]: [In discussing thinkers who "looked beyond the
human" to the cosmic] "Plato did..."
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(ca. 45-125)
“The Department of Weapons: The Sword,” in “The Golden
Caliph”: “Plutarch remarks that Artaxerzes orded [sic] his Persian armies
to discard their heavy, cumbersome weapons and adopt the Roman short-sword.”
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(1809-1849)
REH to Tevis Clyde Smith, 21 August 1926: "I've
about decided that the only American poets worth much are Sidney
Lanier, Poe and [George Sylvester] Viereck; they are equal to any
England ever produced."
REH to Robert W. Gordon, 2 January 1927:
"Americans have less poetry, real poetry, in their souls than
any other nation. How
many really classical poets have we produced?
Lanier, Poe, Viereck -- and who else."
REH to Tevis Clyde Smith, ca. December 1928 [SL 1
#19]: "...De Quincey... was certainly the forerunner of the
school to which Poe contributed and I at present honor with my
presence -- literarily speaking -- I mean the school of fantasy
and horror writing."
REH
to H.P. Lovecraft, ca. 9 August 1930 [SL 1 #39]: "I
realize that it is the custom for enthusiastic readers to compare
a favorite author with Poe, and their comparison is seldom based
on any real estimate, or careful study.
But after a close study of Poe's technique, I am forced to
give as my personal opinion, that his horror tales have been
surpassed by Arthur Machen, and that neither of them ever reached
the heights of cosmic horror or opened such new, strange paths of
imagination as you have done..."
REH to H.P. Lovecraft, ca. October 1930 [SL 1 #47]:
"I have read most of Poe's work..."
From "The Children of the Night" (Weird
Tales, April/May 1931): "You'll find there a number of
delectable dishes – Machen, Poe, Blackwood, Maturin..."
REH to H.P. Lovecraft , ca. December 1932: Poe is
listed among those Howard refers to as "my favorite
writers," as well as among a number of poets Howard likes.
REH to H.P. Lovecraft , 6 March 1933: "... Poe
was a runner and a swimmer in his youth..."
[Ibid.]: "As far as I am concerned, your
stories and poems are superior to anything of the sort ever
written by Dunsany, Machen, Poe, or any of the others."
REH to H.P. Lovecraft, ca. September 1933:
"Anyway, Edgar Allan Poe didn't suffer want and die in
poverty on the frontier. If
he'd been there, somebody would have shot a deer for him, somebody
would have showed him how to build his cabin, and helped him do
it..."
REH to
H.P. Lovecraft, ca. December 1934: "I was particularly
interested in the sketch and description of the Poe cottage in
Philadelphia, and was reminded of a discussion [E. Hoffmann] Price
and I had concerning Poe. Price,
if I remember rightly, considers Poe over-rated."
REH to Emil Petaja July 23, 1935: "Glad you like the bits
of verse I sometimes use for chapter headings. They are mine,
except where due credit is given to the author—in
the past I have used quotations from Chesterton, Kipling, Poe,
Swinburne, and possibly others which I do not at present recall."
(1831)
"Skull-Face": lines 28-28 used as heading for
Chapter 17
(1844)
"The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune": lines 7-8 used
as heading.
"Skull-Face":
lines 5-6 used as heading for Chapter 6.
"Kings of the Night": lines 5-8 used as
heading for Chapter 2.
(1839)
From "The Children of the Night" (Weird
Tales, April/May 1931): "But in such tales as Poe's Fall
of the House of Usher, Machen's Black Seal, and Lovecraft's Call
of Cthulhu – the three master horror-tales, to my mind – the
reader is borne into dark and outer realms of
imagination."
(1832)
REH to H.P. Lovecraft, ca. January 1934, mentions
having heard over the radio "the dramatization of one of
Poe's stories; I forget the name, but it was about a phantom horse
that haunted a royal German family..."
(1845)
"Skull-Face": Line 26 used as heading for
Chapter 11.
"The
Noseless Horror": lines 13-14 quoted.
(1829)
REH to Tevis Clyde Smith, ca. 20 February 1928 [SL 1
#10]: "Therefore the poet, unexcelled in his line, simply
makes a fool of himself when he seeks to cope with Science.
Poe realized that -- you've read his sonnet to
science."
(1827)
"Lord of Samarcand": lines 17-20 used as
heading for Chapter 6; lines 30-31 used as heading for Chapter 7;
lines 44-47 used as heading for Chapter 9.
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Post Oaks and Sand Roughs, p. 87: "Steve
[Costigan = REH] had not the slightest idea of what a sonnet might
be, had always preferred ballads and narrative poems, and had read
only such of the moderns as he had come upon in magazines. ¶
...The iambic pentameter was too slow moving and measured for
Costigan. He liked
verse which beat with wild barbaric clangor, like the sound of
tom-toms.... ¶ Steve discovered Wilde, Swinburne, and Viereck.
New vistas opened to him.
He thrilled and expanded as he read.
He sought poetry and more poetry.
Some was like the delicate tracery of ivory and silver moon
mist, fragile as a dream, yet hard and scintillant as ice.
Some went to his brain, some burned in his blood."
Howard contributed to several small poetry journals: American
Poet (H. Stuart Morrison, Iselin, NJ), The Poets' Scroll
(E.A. Townsend, Howe, OK), JAPM: The Poetry Weekly
(Benjamin F. Musser [q.v.], Atlantic City, NJ), Contemporary
Verse (Musser).
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The
Right Hook, vol. 1, no. 3: Howard lists "The Police
Gazette Editor's Classification" of boxers.
Tevis Clyde Smith, "Adventurer in Pulp":
recalls Howard "reading everything connected with boxing,
from The Police Gazette to The Ring...."
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REH
to H.P. Lovecraft, 13 May 1936: "Let us see what
Professor Walter Prescott Webb says, in his great book, 'The Great
Plains' about the idea that the West is only an undeveloped
extension of Eastern America. But first let us quote, as he does,
John Wesley Powell...."
The quotation is from p. 2 of
Webb's book (q.v.).
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(1912-
)
Sister of Howard's good friend Harold Preece, and editor of
The Junto during 1929-1930.
She, along with Howard and Tevis Clyde Smith, was
represented in the poetry anthology (Images Out of the Sky)
Smith was trying to market to publishers in the fall of 1931 (see
SL 2 #51, note 6; #56, note 67; and #59, note 92).
REH to Harold Preece, ca. 4 January 1930: "I got
the copy of the Longhorn though I was a long time in
acknowledging receiving it to Lenore.
I enjoyed her poems very much.
They stood out from the muck and drivel which characterizes
all college magazines."
[Probably the issue for December
1929, the first in which Preece's poetry appeared in The
Longhorn Magazine, a University of Texas literary magazine.
Preece was a freshman.
She had two poems in the December 1929 issue,
"Winter" (which took a cash prize for best poem of the
semester) and "Close of the Day." (Both were to have
been included in Images Out of the Sky.) She continued to
contribute poetry and prose to the magazine.]
REH to Harold Preece, ca. November 1930: “Speaking
of poets, thanks very much for the poem you sent me – the one by
Lenore. That is truly
a splendid piece of work, as indeed, all of your sister’s work
is. I have no
hesitation in declaring that she will be some day – and that
soon – recognized as one of the foremost poets of the world.
She should make an attempt to bring out her work in book
form. To my mind she
is far superior to Edna St. Vincent Millay right now.”
REH to H.P. Lovecraft , ca. 6 March 1933: "You
know, the finest poets the Southwest has ever produced are
absolutely unknown, and are not even listed in the Texas
Almanac....They are my very good friend Tevis Clyde Smith Jr., of
Brownwood, and the sister of another friend, Lenore Preece of
Austin.... The other poet -- or poetess -- I mentioned, Lenore
Preece, I have never seen, but we used to correspond, and to my
mind she is superior to any other woman-poet America has yet
produced. As I said
before, I do not consider myself an art critic; but I do believe
that most critics would admit that Lenore and Clyde are real
poets."
[Ironically, both Preece and Smith were listed in Texas
Writers of Today, by Florence Elberta Barns (Dallas: Tardy
Publishing Co., 1935), Preece as a poet and Smith as a writer of
history (for Frontier's Generation), while Howard was not
listed.]
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(1898-1988)
REH to H.P. Lovecraft, ca. December 1930 [SL 1 #49]:
"I think Wright's 'Oriental Stories' bids fair to show more
originality than the average magazine dealing with the East,
though the initial issue, was, to me, slightly disappointing --
not in the appearance of the magazine but in the contents.
However, with such writers as Hoffman-Price, Owens and
Kline, I look for better things."
Weird Tales, May 1929.
Farnsworth Wright to REH, 4 October 1932: "By
all means, feel free to use the quotation from Price's story, THE
GIRL FROM SAMARCAND, in your story, BLACK COLOSSUS.
We have no objection whatever."
Weird Tales, September 1929.
REH to The Eyrie, November 1929: "I was
especially taken with A Jest and a Vengeance, by E.
Hoffmann Price. I've
never been east of New Orleans, but as far as I'm concerned Price
has captured the true spirit of the East in his tales, just as
Kipling did. His
stories breathe the Orient.
In this latest tale I note, as in all his others, that
patterned background of beauty for which he is noted.
The action is perfectly attuned to the thought of the tale
and that thought goes deep. More, through the weaving runs a minor note of diabolical
humour, tantalizing and enthralling."
Weird Tales, February 1930.
REH to The Eyrie, April 1930 (see under
"Kline, Otis Adelbert and
E. Hoffmann Price").
Weird Tales, July 1934.
(See under "Lovecraft, H.P. and
E. Hoffmann Price.")
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